Rishi Sunak’s big net zero announcement last week has been responded to warmly by voters, a new poll this afternoon suggests.
Deltapoll polled people from the 22nd to 25th, and saw a four point swing from Labour to the Tories compared to their last poll 10 days ago.
Labour are down three points, with Mr Sunak’s party rising five points.
While Labour is still ahead of the Tories by 16 points, this is a significant swing in a short amount of time.
The poll was of 1,507 adults from Great Britain, and found that both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak were down one percentage point in their respective personal approval ratings.
The period between Deltapoll’s figures today, and their last poll ten days ago, covered a number of significant developments.
Mr Sunak’s big speech announcing a climb down over costly net zero pledges was greeted with support according to snap YouGov polls at the time, with the public backing the move to shift the date of a ban on new petrol and diesel cars back by five years.
The move, which also covered recycling laws and the phasing out of gas boilers, was promoted as helping consumers during a cost of living crisis.
It also put clear blue water between the Tories and Labour, with Rishi Sunak saying it is now up the Sir Keir Starmer to explain why he wants hard-pressed families to fork out “upwards of £5,000, £10,000, £15,000”.
The polling period also covers a lot of negative coverage around Sir Keir’s new pledges on Brexit and illegal migrants.
The Labour leader’s claim that he would agree a migrants return deal with the EU was panned by Tory MPs, who said it would result in the UK having to take between 100,000 and 120,000 migrants from the continent.
Sir Keir also came under fire for comments filmed at a conference of centre-left leaders in Canada, where he said he wants to stay aligned with the EU.
Sir Keir said: “Most of the conflict with the UK being outside of the EU arises in so far as the UK wants to diverge and do different things to the rest of our EU partners.
“Obviously the more we share values, the more we share a future together, the less the conflict. And actually different ways of solving problems become available.
“Actually we don’t want to diverge, we don’t want to lower standards, we don’t want to rip up environmental standards, working standards for people that work, food standards and all the rest of it.”
Tory chairman Greg Hands said “the mask slips” in response to the comments.
He said: “He used to be the cheerleader for a second EU referendum. Looks like little has changed.”
